Twice for Courage
by Malhearst
Summary: "Just stroke the moustache once for comfort, twice for courage."


**Author's Note:** Written for QLFC (Season 4, Finals 2). Position: Keeper for the Falmouth Falcons

 **Word Count:** 926 words

 _Write a story featuring the Out-To-Lunch Fake Moustache_

* * *

i.

"You are messy and late," Professor Snape tells him, and it sounds like the sum of his sins.

Neville rubs his nose and looks down at the ground, making his way to his seat. Hermione dispenses a look of pity to one, a look of fury to the other.

Professor Snape looks unaffected, but Neville, huddling in his seat, isn't. He doesn't like pity—never has—but he has always accepted it as a natural response to his behaviour. His Gran thinks it's about standing up straight and speaking your mind without stammering.

Neville disagrees.

"I'm not afraid of him anymore," he whispers, determined, to Hermione, who looks back at him with a mix of confusion and suspicion.

"Professor Lupin taught us that fear can be beaten by laughter, right?" This time, a few of the students around him turn to look their way, but Neville only notices Hermione nod. "Then let's have something to laugh about."

He pulls out a box and doesn't respond to Hermione looking at him as if he's a blackened, nostalgic tragedy—crumpled and past. Neville isn't repeating history. Especially not his own.

He bought the box at a time when he had very little to worry about, he reflects later, but the first time he uses it, what little worry there is fills his entire world. In full view of everyone in the classroom, Neville puts on the comical prop-like moustache. A gasp goes through the room, and he closes his eyes to savour it before his inevitable doom.

When Professor Snape finally sinks something hurtful into him—teeth, acidic remarks, poison; Neville can't tell, can never tell, the difference—Neville makes a joke.

Neville Longbottom is not himself; he wears a disguise, and he is not himself.

He doesn't remember the joke afterwards, doesn't remember anything but the surge of a thousand children laughing at Professor Snape, and for the first time in his life, Neville is someone they could never understand but can finally appreciate.

A lonely god.

He winks at Harry. He doesn't remember the punishment.

ii.

They're walking together out of the Great Hall, he and his fairy of a friend. He's going to Potions class. She's not.

Luna says, "Just stroke the moustache once for comfort, twice for courage."

iii.

He visits Diagon Alley in a desperate time with a desperate need: to feel a shred of humanity again. The colours are faded and unreal; the streets seem to hold their breaths. There is no humanity, not a single heartbeat. The once-humorous installation over the door to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes now looks abandoned and angry and monstrous.

Neville thinks it fits right in.

Someone scuffles in a side alley, and he thanks Ginny that she commanded him to wear a disguise, any disguise.

Hurrying through what should have been sanctuary, he strokes the moustache once for comfort, twice for courage.

iv.

It doesn't help to hide anymore. Joke items are for children, and Neville has been in this fight for too long to use a moustache as a security blanket. He has a gash on his cheek instead; a battle scar to hide behind.

A borrowed name. Neville the leader. Longbottom the Gryffindor.

Dumbledore's Army. A group of make-believe heroes, borrowing their valour from frustration and a knowledge that death is still the lesser of two evils.

And now death has come to their door. Neville greets them. The Out-To-Lunch Fake Moustache is perched bitterly on a shelf in the Room of Requirement. He thinks for a second that Hermione notices it, but then she moves on.

He doesn't tell them that he's not a hero. They look at him differently, and Neville likes to hide behind their idea of who he has become.

Joke items are for children. Real men hide behind a name, an idea, a misunderstanding.

Neville the hero.

That's something worth showing the world.

v.

He goes to Fred's funeral and almost throws it in the grave as an offering.

vi.

She finds the box at a time when they have very little to worry about. It becomes one of those objects that are used in a tug-o-war, you can't be serious and why would you want to keep this thrown about like projectiles.

Hannah doesn't understand, of course, that Neville isn't looking at it and seeing a potential for a Dad-of-the-Year award.

It's discarded with those khaki pants. In return, he gets her to throw out the window paint she never used as a child and the LP player.

She doesn't own any LP's.

vii.

He sneaks down into the basement in the middle of the night. The nightmares wake him up, but not Hannah. They're living in a house and an age with nothing to worry about; why should she?

Neville has a purpose, though. His feet tap against the cold, concrete floor, and he takes a hissing breath. His hands rub his arms to no avail. Neville is a chunk of flesh made of routines, and this is a standard reaction to feeling cold.

Muscle memory makes him tiptoe, but thankfully, he knows what to look for and where.

Rummaging through the boxes they put down yesterday, it doesn't take him long to single out the correct one. Hannah, after all, has written Charity in neat script on the side.

When he finally finds the small box, he awkwardly leans up against the rough wall and slides down it. A single streak of moonlight finds its way inside, pooling on the floor and reflecting back upon a Neville, sitting in his pyjamas and stroking the moustache once for comfort, twice for courage.


End file.
